Australia ready to begin exporting uranium to India — Prime Minister

Vanadium is used in jet engines, steel and increasingly in high-capacity batteries used for renewable energy storage. Uranium is mainly used in nuclear power. (Image: Petr Pavlicek / IAEA.)

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Monday the country was ready to begin shipping uranium to India, after almost three years of discussions between the two nations following an export deal for power generation.

Speaking in New Delhi, where he arrived on Sunday on a four-day visit, his first to India after assuming office in 2015, Turnbull said Australia was looking forward to the first export of uranium to India as soon as possible. "We have worked closely with India to meet our respective requirements for the provision of fuel for India's civil nuclear program," he said according to Associated Press.

India faces chronic shortages of electricity, with about a third of its billion-plus population having little or no access to it. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed to provide power to the entire country by 2019, but it needs more uranium than it can produce locally to fuel its over 20 nuclear power plants currently in operations.